Westbound Sign ➵ Billie Joe Armstrong

Letter I Wasn't Meant to Find

Collin

June. Warm. Feeling better.

The windows were open, Texas heat already climbing the walls, and my mom was blasting Linda Ronstadt through the kitchen like it was a holy ritual.

I was barefoot. Hair tied up. Elbows deep in Windex and old memories.

I hadn't deep cleaned my room in months - since before everything. Since before him.

And for a while, it felt good. Productive. Like maybe if I scrubbed hard enough, I could bleach out whatever version of myself had fallen in love with a boy in a shitty motel room and believed that was going to be enough.

But then I saw it.

Still in the corner. Still zipped up. Green Day shirt sticking out.

The suitcase.

The same one I packed last October like I was running away to join the circus. I hadn't touched it since we got back. I think I always meant to. Maybe. Eventually.

But it sat there like a time capsule. A coffin.

I stared at it for too long. Like if I opened it, the ghost of last summer would come pouring out and ask me what the hell I thought I was doing pretending I was okay.

I sat down beside it on the floor.

It still had a sticker from that motel in San Antonio. The one with the terrible water pressure and the vending machine that ate Billie's change three times in a row. He'd called it fate. I'd called it bullshit. And then I kissed him like it meant something.

I undid the zipper.

The smell hit me first - hotel soap, denim, Billie's sweatshirt I never gave back.

I didn't even know I had it. It was folded at the bottom, stuffed under a handful of merch tees and the notebook I wrote in when I couldn't sleep.

I held the sweatshirt in my hands. It still smelled like California summer and cigarettes.

And maybe it was the heat. Or the song my mom was singing along to in the other room. Or maybe it was just finally time - but something cracked.

That quiet part of me - the one I'd buried beneath classes and coffee runs and small talk with Derek and too many nights pretending not to care, that part started to feel again.

It didn't hurt like before.

It just... ached.

Softly. Consistently. Like a song I knew the words to, even if I didn't want to sing along.

I looked at the sweatshirt and whispered, "What am I supposed to do with you?"

I didn't get an answer, of course.

But for the first time, I didn't feel like running away from it.

I should've stopped at the sweatshirt.

But I didn't.

I don't know what I was looking for, maybe something to hurt me. Maybe something to make it real again. Whatever it was, I kept digging.

My ghost costume was still in there. Wrinkled, dusty, thread hanging from the bell sleeve. I held it up and laughed, a hollow kind of laugh, because it had felt like a joke then. It didn't anymore. I was a ghost. Haunting my own life.

Underneath that - tucked into one of the side pockets was the Kerplunk album Billie bought me in El Paso. Still wrapped in shrink. Still unopened.

I stared at it. Fingers hovering just above the plastic, too afraid to peel it open, too guilty to pretend it meant nothing.